ANSWERING A FILM’S MISINFORMATION

Dear Mr. Ebert: Don't fall for 'Windfall'
Tom Gray, 2012 February 4 (Into the Wind)

"As the anti-wind docu-diatribe 'Windfall' opened this weekend in Chicago and New York, AWEA extended an unusual invitation to noted film critic Roger Ebert to come visit an actual operating wind farm so he can better judge for himself whether the film tells the truth...[The] normally clear-eyed film critic [seemed to be] taken in by…[the movie's] fact-free and slanted take on wind power...['Windfall' has] HD cinematography and lingering landscape views of rural New York…but there is little pretense of balance or scientific accuracy…[O]ther reviewers have noticed."

[Noel Murray, AV Club:] "The documentary isn’t big on hard data; instead, [Director Laura] Israel allows the majority of her interviewees to deliver anecdotes, speculation, anti-corporate conspiracy theories, and just a few statistics, rebutted only by their equally riled-up neighbors or by industrial videos."


From greenman3610 via YouTube

"AWEA urges Mr. Ebert to see for himself…No energy source, or human activity for that matter, is completely benign. Regardless of how we decide to power our society, there will be some impacts... The National Academy of Sciences has estimated the ‘hidden costs’ of traditional energy sources — largely due to the human health impacts from pollution — at $120 billion per year...[By comparison,] wind power has remarkable health benefits…[regardless of] the colossal quantity of misinformation about wind power circulated on the Internet [and repeated in the movie]…

"This year, U.S. wind turbines will generate as much electricity as a train full of coal stretching from Los Angeles to London, with no air or water pollution, greenhouse gases, or hazardous waste. You won't learn that from 'Windfall,' because this film is not about the choices we make as a society, but rather about smearing an industry and misinforming all the Americans who are counting on wind to make more clean, renewable energy than any other source — right now, when we need it the most."